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Next time Sisters Uncut protest about Gaza, perhaps they could take a look at Hamas's record on women's rights

The so-called feminist group's demonstration at Liverpool Street Station on Tuesday shows just how confused they are about their mission

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November 01, 2023 16:22

I am a professional grown-up, so I’ve been trying to formulate a professional and grown-up response to news that the feminist group Sisters Uncut organised a pro-Palestine protest in Liverpool Street Station on Tuesday night, where provocative slogans were chanted as well as demands for a ceasefire. But I’m afraid all I’ve come up with is: are you all on glue?

Let’s start with Sisters Uncut specifically before getting into the wider issue of calls for an Israeli ceasefire generally.

Sisters Uncut is a feminist group that emerged as a response to government’s cuts to services for victims of domestic violence. Since then, they have at times seemed a bit – shall we say – confused about their mission.

One of the last causes they campaigned for before they began obsessively tweeting about the evils of Israel was to defend someone known as Sarah Jane Baker, a transwoman who previously spent 30 years in prison for kidnap and attempted murder. This summer, at a rally in London, Baker called for feminists to be punched in the face.

Truly, a natural cause célèbre for a feminist group! So we shouldn’t expect logic from them. But nonetheless, let’s deal with their demands for an Israeli ceasefire.

It just so happened that on the day Sisters Uncut held their protest – which was joined by an estimated 500 people – US Secretary of State Antony Blinken testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee about what he had seen of the slaughter in Israel.

He described one Israeli family in a kibbutz who were tortured by Hamas terrorists. The father’s eyes were gouged out, the mother’s breasts sliced off, the eight-year-old girl’s foot cut off, the six-year-old boy’s fingers cut off.

They were all then executed, and their killer then sat down and ate the breakfast the family had been enjoying together before hell emerged in their home.

Then there are the stories of pregnant women sliced open and their foetuses beheaded, elderly women raped, young women paraded through the streets with bloodied trousers – all by Hamas.

Even aside from the horrors of October 7, let’s look at women’s status under Hamas. In Gaza, there are no laws protecting women from physical or sexual violence within a family. Women are wildly discriminated against within the justice system there, with rules such as women needing to pay to obtain a divorce (free to men, of course) and requiring male permission to travel. Israel, by contrast, is the only country in the Middle East with full rights granted to women.

Campaigning for the rights of the Palestinians is not the same as campaigning for Hamas. But it is genuinely mind-boggling that Sisters Uncut and others of their ilk aren’t making the obvious connection here, and campaigning AGAINST Hamas.

Yes, Israel is bombing Gaza – we’ll get back to that – but it’s Hamas that is specifically failing to protect its citizens, embedding in heavily populated areas and saying the tunnels are only for Hamas fighters; it’s Hamas that failed to make any provisions for its citizens before it launched its attack on Israel; and it’s Hamas that has oppressed the women there for as long as it’s been in power.

Does any of this matter to Sisters Uncut? Or are they more interested in empty gestures and sloganeering than actually helping women? (Speaking of, how strange that they only developed an interest in Gaza during the Israeli bombardment. I guess they must have slept through all the protests Palestinians held against Hamas in previous years, because they had nowt to say about that.)

Anyone with eyes and a brain is horrified by the thousands of deaths in Gaza, especially those of the children.

Everyone wants peace, and for all citizens – Israeli and Palestinian – to live without fear. But if anybody knows how to get rid of a terrorist group, whose charter calls for a Jewish genocide, without fighting and bloodshed, speak up now.

Because quick reminder: there WAS a ceasefire, until Hamas broke it on October 7 by storming into Israel and slaughtering and kidnapping innocent people.

Hamas leaders have said they will do it again and again until Israel no longer exists, because they are psychopathic terrorists who want to wipe out Jews and don’t care about their own citizens. That is why this war is happening.

So all of these protesters and politicians shouting for peace and a ceasefire would look less deluded if they offered any plan for how to achieve this, because without that, they might as well make a wish on a dove.

Unless looking good matters more to them than doing good, in which case, by all means, carry on guys.

November 01, 2023 16:22

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